Cold Snap
by Naoki1
Summary: It's a damn cold night and misery loves company...Sirius/Snape slash.


Title: Cold Snap  
  
Chapter: 1/1  
  
Author: Naoki / Naoki_pyromaniac@hotmail.com  
  
Rating/Warnings/Categories: Slash, slightly dark and angsty and twisted...but did you expect anything different from something involving Snape? ^_~  
  
Author's Notes: I wrote this the day before OotP came out but because of re-drafting, etc, it wasn't really ready until after I had finished the book...but I'll put it up anyways, if only because I'm sick of looking at it on my hard-drive.   
  
Disclaimer: It's all JKR's doing...  
  
~*~  
  
It was New Years, it was Hogsmeade and it was forbidden. Not that a Marauder saw any problem with that because a Marauder could never really enjoy themselves if a little mischief making wasn't involved.   
  
A little montage of images played on a endless loop behind Sirius's eyelids, all involved copious amounts of alcohol and a fair bit of swearing until he had ended up outside The Three Broomsticks, by his own devices or someone else's, sitting in the gutter and literally freezing. Not that he cared. Not really. He was drunk, that was the most pressing concern.   
  
Stars burnt much too brightly in the sky and Sirius realised in the dark, silent streets of Hogsmeade the true power of moonlight, in the summer which he spent in the cities, shuttled around between family members, you just didn't realise it was there. The light. Yeah, the moon was still there but it didn't shine like it did up here. Bloody beautiful, Sirius thought, it almost put sunlight to shame.   
  
He could see the reflection of the slate roofing on the Shrieking Shack and was struck with the insane sense of enthusiasm for the stupidest of things that you only ever had while you were drunk...  
  
The rest was a bit of a blur admittedly, he did recall someone coming outside to mock him in the gutter but it took him quite a while to make the connection between this and the point which he was at now - halfway down the lane that led to the Shack with a most unusual walking partner.   
  
"Black, turn around! Go back to your cronies already...it's bloody pointless!"   
  
Even in his state, and Black privately thought his walking was getting better and his vision was becoming clearer, he knew who it was and responded as such.  
  
"Fuck off, Snivellus"   
  
Snape cursed back and grabbed his sleeve while placing particular empathsis on his next words "Black, it's cold and as much as having you out of the way would make my life less of a misery, even I would not like to think I could have avoided you being mangled by some beast or breaking your neck"  
  
Sirius murmured something like "Lovely to have you looking out for me, vipers make great babysitters, don't they say that?"  
  
"I'd rather break your neck myself, be a pity to let some pathetic half-human thing have the empty pleasure of it but as it is..." Snape shot back, trying to steer Sirius without touching him too much directly, it was a wasted effort as Sirius pushed his arm away and made his own way down the lane.   
  
Snape shivered, he hadn't realised how cold it was outside, after the warm, if irritatingly noisy, atmosphere of The Three Broomsticks and he paused, drawing his hands into his cloak as he observed the pathetically dishelleved teen that was Sirius Black.   
  
"Bloody hellfire, it's cold out here, innit?" commented Sirius, propped up against the fence that ran along the side for support. "What I wouldn't give for a warm Butterbeer..." he murmured idly before privately considering what he would do for a warm Butterbeer.   
  
"Why are you following me?" Sirius asked abruptly, Snape remained a few steps away, his cloak pulled tightly around him, his gaze fixed on the ground where he scuffed the toe of his boot in the frozen dirt of the lane.   
  
"Don't they say misery loves company?" observed Snape icily, raising an eyebrow as he realised that Sirius was laughing.   
  
"Yes, they all do! All the bastards love company! Deep down we all hate what we want so badly it hurts, and then we trick ourselves into thinking that it's their fault and we should hate them for it when it should be us...that's what misery is all about!"   
  
No, that's what love is about sometimes thought Snape, morbidly intrigued by Black's apparently limitless rambling.   
  
"And you're the worst of the lot, Snape, miserable bastard extraordinaire! But now I'm miserable we can forget all the crap that's happened because misery unites people, didn't you know that? And misery only keeps good company"  
  
Snape was shivering now but he didn't know if it was because of the cold or the fact that during his drunken ramble, Sirius had unsteadily come closer to him, closer than he ever had, for proximity wasn't an issue when you were flinging insults at each other.   
  
There was something in Sirius's demeanour that made him uneasy, for it was no secret to Snape, no denial on his part, that he was jealous of Sirius Black, so much so that he just detested the sight of him. Him and his Quidditch skills. Him and his friends. Him and his endless supply of female admirers. Just him being happy by himself.   
  
"Do I make you miserable?" asked Sirius conversationally. Snape looked at him with the familiar guarded look of his, searching for any sign of ridicule.   
  
"That the most empty and foolish question I have heard in a long time, Black"  
  
"Oh...that's a yes then but you make me miserable so it all evens out"  
  
"I haven't repaid you for the werewolf incident, Black" answered Snape vehemently. "It is not evened out, but that's what I'd expect from a Gryffindor - a crooked sense of justice"  
  
"Better to have one than none at all, Slytherin..."  
  
The silence filled the gap between them, seamlessly it appeared but both teens minds seemed to be working like whirring, incessant clockwork and none of them were really surprised by what followed next.   
  
Sirius muttered something that only Snape could hear and it hardly seemed that the words were out of his mouth that Snape answered 'yes' and what seemed to drag on for an eternity, they neared each other, dread and excitement and delight and hate and a million more emotions fuelling them, and kissed.   
  
Rather simply kissed. No undue passion, no coaxing of tongues or hands running through hair and then all he felt was the bar of a fence digging into the small of his back while Black kissed him.   
  
Was it jealously? Was it knowing that Black would hate himself for it in the morning? Or was it secretly, that he didn't mind 'lowering' himself to Black's level as long as it always was a level that involved all this?   
  
An hour or so ago it had all seemed so simple! Now he could barely recall why he had followed Black out of The Three Broomsticks and why he had pulled him out of the gutter and why now, halfway between a forsaken shack and Hogsmeade, he was leaning on a fence while Black knelt between his legs and kissed him, nipped at areas that ought not to be nipped at and murmured to himself or so it seemed to Snape.   
  
It seemed like hours later when he pushed Black away and began storming off in the direction of Hogwarts, ignoring Black's hoarse shouting and yelling - he already knew the words, he already knew Black's voice - from silky, seductive tones to brash, aggressive anger - so he didn't need to stop and really hear it. He already had a thousand times in idle jealous daydreams that chewed him up inside, where all this had happened before.   
  
Only this time he had let it go too far, all this was for a different reason than those dreams which were so much different - in those dreams they were friends. Not tormentor and tormented.   
  
"I hate you!" he called out to Black.   
  
It sounded juvenile and pathetic in the night but it was true, if only because he was saying it to himself. Sirius had already caught up with him, alcohol pounding through his veins now giving him an almost maddening rush of energy that he knew would take its toll.  
  
"That's okay but I hate just about everyone right now" said Sirius, pulling Snape into a kiss that left him spluttering for air, somehow he had felt that these moments would be romantic, strolls in the moonlight, smelling of roses. Preferably with a female companion.   
  
This was just breaking all the rules.   
  
They stood for a few moments, Sirius holding Snape's face like he was shielding a flame from the cold. The silence only added to the fear until Snape asked, quietly, "Even yourself?"  
  
"Doesn't everyone?" answered Sirius, head resting on Snape's shoulder in such a way that he could breathe on his neck and lick to feel the warmth that came from the network of veins beneath the slightly damp skin. "No-one has it better than you, Severus, no one has it worse than you - of course not" he muttered, letting his fingers brush down Snape's side, loving the awkward intake of breath and the hesitant feel of Snape's hands in his hair.   
  
Sirius was tugging at the buttons of Snape's trousers now, rough fingers and poor co-ordination betraying him and against all expectations of self; Snape found himself helping Sirius remedy the situation. This was almost like magic; except it wasn't...it was just lust. You couldn't fight it, not when the kisses were so forceful, not when the emotions were running so high.   
  
Severus briefly felt as if he could touch the stars as Sirius began to become more focused and undid the buttons of his shirt, casting it aside into the darkness of the lane. The air was chilled and Snape shivered as Sirius began to pull off his robes, kissing him roughly - he tasted of alcohol, stale cigarettes and cold air - and despite it all, Snape kissed him back, just as forcefully.   
  
Was it about power? Was it all to see who would back away first and call the other's bluff? Or was it because beneath the hate, something else burned - not love, not tenderness - something ugly, something shameful, something that drew them together now in the coldness?  
  
Was it to keep each other warm when hate had run out of things to say...?   
  
If anything, it wouldn't last. It wouldn't go too far because it couldn't.   
  
It didn't matter, not in the end, because all it was merely an outlet for the idea that deep down, Sirius Black and Severus Snape did not hate each other. They just made each other miserable.   
  
Minutes later, they dressed - having only removed shirts and robes - buttoning up half undone trousers with a lack of words that became too much for Sirius and quietly he asked the question that rested heavily on his mind and at Snape's look knew he had touched a nerve, not that he cared, not that anything that just happened connected with everything else because it didn't.  
  
"Well..." Snape murmured as he began to walk away "Isn't everything what we make of it?"  
  
The statement seemed to draw an almost unbearable sense of humiliation, regret and intense disgust within Black and he opened his mouth to fire off a seething retort but Snape was out of hearing already, he had probably lightly sprinted away in the darkness until he had faded into the cold night, and out of mind.  
  
It all seemed wrong outside of his alcohol soaked mind and inside it was even worse, because deep down inside, he realised he was as sober as he ever was.   
  
And all Sirius Black did was hold his arms around himself and curse Snape for taking his outdoor robes in addition to his own. Always a bastard, always Snape. And it was colder than he could recall tonight, the heat inside rapidly dwindling away as if Snape had taken that too.   
  
He had been repaid for the werewolf incident. Ten fold.   
  
A few moments later, obscured by the darkness and closer than Sirius realised, Snape heard a howl that seemed caught between a human throat and a animal one and it took all his effort in not wanting to echo that sentiment.   
  
Perhaps he wouldn't goad Black about it; Merlin knew Snape hated it when he was goaded about something he couldn't have because he couldn't bear to lower his defences.   
  
He held Sirius's cloak close to him, not wearing it, despite the cold and his slight frame and he walked away from it all, relishing the empty warmth inside.   
  
It was a cold night after all.   
  
~*~ 


End file.
